A New Age of Sympathy?

I had not intended to reintroduce Ain't Studying You with this post, but I've been doing so much writing and thinking on gun violence in the US that it seemed appropriate.

I nearly typed that I'd been doing thinking "in the wake of Newtown." I hesitate there because I am disturbed by the tendency to disconnect Newtown from Kansas City, Jacksonville, Sanford, not to mention the number of fatalities by guns or drones that remain untold and publicly unmourned.

It seems important to think about the injunction to feel worse about this loss of life than about others. (I'm drawing here on Fred Moten's crystalline explanation of the demand on the so-called Left for "more feeling" for the dead of 9/11 than those innocent dead of US strikes before or after it.) The distribution of sympathy--as much as that of wealth, rights, and guns--remains a life or death matter. What follows is, quite simply, a call to feel more often about more people.

Seizing Difference or Having Difference Thrust Upon Him: President Obama and Democratic Strategy

For SC and NEP

I'm not an Obama hater, but this from Krugman was so startlingly true it made me laugh: "It looks from here as if the president’s idea of how to bargain is to start by negotiating with himself, making pre-emptive concessions, then pursue a second round of negotiation with the G.O.P., leading to further concessions."

Since the early 1990s (at least), the Democratic leadership has had some success in stealing Republican initiatives and making them their own. For President Clinton, it was welfare reform. Currently, President Obama seems to be trying to take deficit reduction and spending cuts from the Tea Party. There's no doubting the political advantage to stealing an issue that has galvanized your opposition. However, snatching the rug out from under your opponents and making it your cape is not the only strategy. In fact, I would say it is best as a short-term strategy and what the Dems lack is a long-term one. Hence, they lost their majority in the blink of an eye. (Let's not forget, the Democrats--fractured though they were by region--controlled the Congress from the 1950s to the Gingrich-led revolution of 1992. Why do Congressional majorities shift so frequently now?)

Think back to 2004. Remember all the excitement around Howard Dean before the infamous post-primary press conference where he somehow mixed "Yeah," "Yee-haw," and "Ow" in an over-inflated show of optimism? The excitement Dean generated came from the clear alternative he offered to the sitting President--one who, we should remember, won the office by the narrowest of margins (and that's a generous interpretation). As the Democrats struggled to find a military candidate to steal President Bush's war mantle, they eventually settled on John Kerry. Most of us recall him--with some help from late-night television--as a dry and boring senator. However, what I would say was most boring about him was not his demeanor but his political unoriginality. 

I remember watching one of the debates and hearing Kerry say, repeatedly "President Bush is right..." or "I agree with the President..." My question, at that point, was simple: Then why should I vote for you to replace him? It's difficult enough to unseat an incumbent; drawing only faint contrasts can't improve the odds. (Kindly correct me if a candidate has ever taken an office by vowing to do the same things as an opponent who is still living).

Kerry's copycat strategy had appeared before in 2000 when candidate Gore said that he supports the death penalty despite the fact that its application is notoriously  in thrall to racist fear, the capacity to buy an excellent defense team, and judicial caprice.  Krugman's point above helps us to see the unnecessary "pre-emptive concessions" made by politicians who seem to have taken themselves hostage. It makes me laugh, but then it makes me want to tear my hair out.

The Luxury of No Stance

We're caught in the middle, Carol.
We're middle class. We're middle aged.
We were wild in the old days...
-- Joni Mitchell "Chinese Café"

An old saying runs that a young person who is not liberal has no heart and an old one who is not conservative has no brain. The idea, of course, is that in all situations, the Truth or the Best Path lies between two extremes. While this seems a reasonable statement on its face, the problem has always been in determining what really counts as extreme. Opposing parties in a dispute are not necessarily at extremes: think of the considerable overlap between the major political parties in the US. President Obama, for example, is not a socialist, despite Republican rhetoric to the contrary. An opponent does not necessarily indicate a pure extreme. Taking the middle point in any dispute strikes me as not only morally lazy but also, eventually, paralyzing.

In the last post, I considered the idea that one can and must maintain political ideals even while realizing that political negotiation demands compromise. I was hoping to communicate that certain short-term concessions might be necessary in order to achieve a long-term goal. As the old spiritual says, "Keep your eyes on the prize/Hold on."

Today, I had the opportunity to read an excellent article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, marred by one flaw: it has an insightful recognition of the seeming paradox that the academic arena of queer theory shares the fundamentalist Christian belief that gayness is not a core aspect of one's identity.  However, the author then forgets this point and wrongly suggests that someone who adhered to queer theory and then became a fundamentalist Christian switched from one extreme to another. The writer and many of the commenters then suggested that a middle way between gay orthodoxy and Christian orthodoxy was necessary. A big helping of moderation all around.

I am happy to report the NYT selected my immoderate comment as one of the editors' highlights. Perhaps my academic knowledge can be translated to the popular sphere after all!

Play Politics -- Or Take Your Ball and Go Home

One of the more interesting developments of the last few years is that President Obama seems to bring about very polarized responses within the Left -- which for current purposes I'm calling that wide swath from Clinton Democrats to doctrinaire socialists, pacifists, and the like. At least since the George W. Bush era, we have heard of increasing polarization within the US electorate: red states versus blue states, evangelicals versus "secular-progressives," the heartland versus East Coast elites. In the Bush era, the most vicious disagreements seemed to be between liberals and conservatives (again, broadly construed). As Iraq dragged on and New Orleans flooded, you could pretty much count on anyone to the left of Donald Rumsfeld to despise the Bush administration. What we have now, though, is a bit more surprising: a rift within a bloc that was unified by their anti-Bush sentiment. This unity was, it seems, as short-lived as any alliance made against an external foe -- like a Bin Laden. With the foe vanquished or vanished, all the old disputes resurface. And so it seems that among those who voted for President Obama, we now have staunch defenders who will not brook an unkind word said against the administration and disgusted partisans who consider him to be a spineless panderer or "worse than Bush."

This last claim seems inflated by hysteria. Certainly, one can find single issues on which the administration has either continued Bush policies (Guantanamo and black ops prisons), compromised with Republicans (the deal to extend tax cuts for the most wealthy), or imposed more Draconian measures of their own (immigration). However, one can also find single issues on which President Obama was able to succeed in ways that has Democratic predecessors had failed: outlawing discrimination against gays and lesbians in the military, passing health care reform, mandating gender equity in pay.

Within the fraying leftish coalition is a group who decries failures of the administration to impose policies that we would like as proof of either the President's weakness or the Democratic Party's secret conservative agenda. I would say that this group does not like politics -- a strange aversion, considering how often they utter the word. Outside of autocracies, politics does not work by imposition. The process of political negotiation proceeds based on what you can get others to agree to do. Therefore you do not get everything you want -- even if you are "right." Being "right" barely enters the equation, sadly. Moreover, even when you get what you want and what is right, that victory often has unintended consequences -- foreseen and unforeseen messes that have to be cleaned up. That's why the song goes: Pressure. Persuade. Negotiate. Rinse. Repeat.

To say that participating in political life means accepting the fact of concessions does not mean that one should not hold positions. It means that the difference between pragmatism and idealism is not determined by the supposed cowardice of the pragmatist. (The loud insistence that the reason the Left has not achieved total victory lies in Obama's secret conservative ideology or well-concealed lack of vertebrae run on variations of this theme).

Idealism is a worthy game, but it is a different one from engaging in the political process. In any group situation, from a theater to a business or government, no one ever reaches the ideal. There are too many egos and ideological differences to contend with--not to mention the fact of human fallibility. But one can still get tasks accomplished in these settings. They are simply unlikely to reflect exactly any one participant's ideal. And even if one person's ideal were achieved, sustaining it becomes dependent upon the leverage and charisma associated with that personality.

That gulfs separate ideology from legislative settlement -- and both from enactment -- does not justify abandoning ideals--far from it. Still, it is time to recognize that the fight of politics takes more than simply stating the ideal with eloquence and force. It takes all the persuasion, negotiation, and concession necessary to inch (and sometimes leap) forward on important matters.

While I find the exposé style of Obama's Left-intellectual critics to be ineffective, I also cannot support the strategy of those who put their true beliefs aside and overlook the President's concessions. Disagreeing with the President's choices and demanding that the Democratic party return to some core principles is not an act of disloyalty--even in the midst of virulent right-wing attacks on the First Black PresidentTM. It's really what being a constituent is about: reminding representatives of who they represent and what we expect of them. We need not accept the rightward drift of the Democratic Party and should continue showing up and pushing in the opposite direction. Taking our ball and going home is not an option. But neither is allowing the party to ignore us.

Sports, War, and Politics from the Couch Potato Perspective

Don't get me wrong, I prefer President Obama to the Republican alternatives for 2012. And I realize that his taking credit for being the Action Hero who took out bin Laden increases his chances of being returned to office. But, at the risk of arming the President's enemies (some of whom are mine, too)... What is with our country's addiction to guilt and credit by association? President Obama did not kill bin Laden. Yes, he is the Commander in Chief. Yes, the execution was carried out by his order. But the Navy Seals did it.

On the other hand, I can see why the President gets credit. At least he was directly involved in the chain of command. There is some sense in which the old "body politic" metaphor holds, when the Head of State gives an order to be carried out by Foot Soldiers, as it were. But the celebration on the couches and in the stadia? Unless one has served in the military or has loved ones serving, I cannot understand the cheering, the drunken frat party hooting.

These are the times that I wish I studied sports and fan psychology more. Because it seems the couch potato is the proper metaphor here.

Sports fans as couch potatoes live vicariously through their sports heroes. The athletes' risks, leaps, triumphs, and humiliations are the couch potatoes' own. The fans in the bleachers and on their La-Z-Boys want to have in their own lives the feelings that they imagine athletes have: the agony and the ecstasy, as it were. Most important, they want their decisions to matter as much as Derek Jeter's or Peyton Manning's. They want to be the guy entrusted with the ball when there are only 2 seconds left in the game and someone has to shoot the three-pointer.

Ok. This is great. No problem. I am not against entertainment. No doubt, those who enjoy music, theater, dance,  and movies have the same feelings. We want King Lear's earth-shaking emotions, Ouisa Kittridge's revelations, Dave Chapelle's outrageous imagination, Michael Jackson's unequaled grace. The difference is that the sports world has become a metaphor not for the individual psyche but for political life. I  personally feel uplifted and inspired at a Dianne Reeves concert. The whole city is supposed to rejoice when the Heat wins. The whole country is supposed to rejoice when US Hockey beats Russia.

But, for me, the relationship between athlete, spectator, and city or nation is not a straight line, no matter how much we have been induced to think that way by the infotainment media. I understand ESPN doing it. Sports is their baby and they have to make it seem as important as possible. But to see so-called news channels behaving like ESPN? This makes no sense. There is no national unity. And the proof of this will be in how quickly whatever alleged unity comes from the killing of bin Laden evaporates.

I'm not precisely sure why we are all expected to be happy about this execution.

1.  Did all of us participate in it? I can understand the Navy Seals or even the National Security Team celebrating. They were, more or less, directly involved. 
2. Does it retroactively justify the illegal aspects of the War on Terror, freeing those who have been detained or even tortured without cause for a decade? (*Note that if "all is fair in love and war" then so is flying planes into buildings). 
3. Does it do anything to address the political crisis we have in this country, the massive disagreement over the responsibilities of citizens and governments to each other, especially in the midst of a new age of robber barons?

I suppose we all need a break from such things. I suppose that sports provides that respite. But since the first Gulf War, we have also had military conflict as home entertainment. Isn't there something wrong with the transition of bloody war into the space where I view sports and play video games without having to see the consequence? I would venture to say there are at least two things: first, with the exception of rare cases in soccer, the outcome of sports matches is not a life-and-death matter. War always is. Second, just as with the athletic contest, when the euphoria of shared emotions wanes, as it must, all the petty team dynamics come back to the surface.

Until we decide what ethical principles are going to guide our relationships with each other and the rest of the world, both sports and war will be a momentary distraction before we return to the strange combination of apathy, impotence, and vicious indifference that characterize our unhappy relationships with each other and our country.

100,00 STEM teachers. What am I, chopped liver?

As I read the transcripts of President Obama's Second State of the Union, I found myself--and not for the first time--suppressing the feeling that my chosen profession has a limited future. However, this will not be another wailing lament from those who placed their chips on an academic career in the Humanities. There are enough of those robotic dialogues on xtranormal.com to satisfy anyone who wishes to familiarize herself with the unappealing side of academic life, laugh uncontrollably at the first few scenarios, and then be over the whole thing. (1) Instead, I want to talk about  the way the President praised education but then created a very narrow sense of it, one that would not, in fact, recognize or value his own educational path or current public role.


(1) Believe me, I was sad that the recent one about ethnic studies, starring computer-generated person of color, was the first one I saw that I found too derivative and predictable to chuckle at. Getting there first means everything! The standards, alas, go up for latecomers who have the benefit and the weight of their predecessors' example.

Any educator still dedicated to the vocation would have been moved by this moment, a portrait of teachers as everyday heroes: "If you want to make a difference in the life of our nation; if you want to make a difference in the life of a child -- become a teacher. Your country needs you." However, in calling for a new level of "respect" for teachers, the President then proposed to allocate of resources (and the respect that accompanies them) to "100,000 new teachers in the fields of science and technology and engineering and math"  (STEM, for short).


I found this emphasis especially strange when placed alongside the jingoistic claim near the beginning of his speech that American students are set apart from those elsewhere (implicitly China and India) by our educational system's attempts to elicit their creativity: "It's why our students don't just memorize equations, but answer questions like 'What do you think of that idea? What would you change about the world? What do you want to be when you grow up?'" 


Let us put aside for the moment the Amy Chua phenomenon and the mistaken paranoia that every Asian parent is engaged in tyrannical parenting (and every Asian child is successfully ruled by its rod) to focus on another question: where else, but in areas such as history, philosophy, literature, political science, anthropology, and sociology does one best engage and evaluate ideas and the state of the world? I dare say that without these areas of inquiry, those questions are impossible to ask, let alone begin to answer. In fact, the very man uttering these words was not shaped by a curriculum restricted to math and science, but, memorably and ultimately, by a law school. Certainly, we are not to dismiss our own President because the study of law is about precedent (history) and interpretation (hermeneutics, narrative, and argumentation).

Even if these activities were considered mere leisure pursuits, idle philosophizing distinct from the urgent priorities of the work-day, it is also true that they complement and sharpen the very enterprises the President wishes to support. Though it is now viewed by most as needless tedium, grammar is nothing but the study of logic. If one understands the logic of a sentence or a longer paragraph, one is learning the same kinds of mechanisms that can be used to describe forces in physics or reactions in chemistry. (It is no coincidence that I excelled in describing the behaviors of catalysts, vectors, friction, and sound waves, as there were corresponding notions in my favorite areas of fiction and music). 


I also recall being told (forgive the anecdote) that a large number of those who go on to medical school did not just study anatomy and physiology but also practiced a musical instrument. So, beyond the normal argument that the fields beyond the hard sciences make us better citizens or bring us wisdom, one should add, loudly, that the key questions that our President says make American students unique, and the crucial professions that he says will make the nation prosper, cannot be pursued without the social sciences, arts, and humanities.

Now, I realize that my friend and mentor Robyn would hasten to add here that the Office of the President is speaking through President Obama. That is to say, he is not speaking his own independent thoughts, but rather trying to inflect and hopefully direct a public discourse that he did not create. A President has to occupy its clichés and assumptions and try to marshal them to his ends (I use the pronoun only because we have not yet had a female president). So, the contradictions that I am speaking of do not fall at the President's feet. Rather, they indicate something about the prevailing common sense in the US, a set of assumptions that attempts to force certain decisions by rendering preposterous other options. The common sense of neoliberalism (trickle-down Reaganomics, for the uninitiated) has a grip over the mainstream conversation and, unfortunately, its assumptions are actually blocking new answers to questions about the validity of ideas and the direction of our world far more than any deficiency in math or science.